• Member Since 6th Feb, 2012
  • offline last seen 52 minutes ago

Rao the Red Sun


Ph.D. in procrastination and occasional writer of pony stories.

More Blog Posts93

  • 219 weeks
    Ot No, It's WriteOff Time

    The sun, moon, stars, and hearts of all WriteOffTopia have aligned in a never before seen triple helix shape, finally allowing the Dread Prompt "Ot" to escape its prison beneath the long forgotten dreadwaves. So, if you want a chance to write some silly or serious or

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    0 comments · 298 views
  • 228 weeks
    Happy New Year!

    And more importantly to me because calendar breakpoints are functionally arbitrary: new story going up soon. Soon-ish, it's in queue, however long that takes. Nothing too fancy or too long, just a mildly expanded version of one of my recent WriteOff entries.

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    0 comments · 256 views
  • 238 weeks
    Fin

    I self banned myself from FimFic until I could get around to watching the finale. Of course, I had to watch all of season 9 first, so it took me a while. I had nearly 60 notification to go through and, full disclosure, I kind of skimmed them because...

    My heart hurts. I physically ache.

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    1 comments · 320 views
  • 250 weeks
    BronyCon: The Final Frontier

    I'm not going! Woo!

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    0 comments · 306 views
  • 304 weeks
    WriteOff Shill: Redux: Artlectic Bugaboo

    So, it's about that time again. Figure I'd plug the WriteOff event before it actually got started this time. Seems helpful. Anyway, this is one of our odd rounds, called "pic2fic." Instead of writing a story based on a prompt, we'll be having art submissions based on the chosen prompt and then writing our stories based on one (or more) pieces of the submitted art.

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    0 comments · 329 views
Mar
20th
2018

How Am Does Do Art? · 5:36am Mar 20th, 2018

So, on something of a whim I bought this drawing tablet. I've always wanted to be better with art, and I have access to the full (but old) Photoshop suite, so I figured what the hell, time to learn. But, my hands have the steadiness of a meth addict sucking on a jackhammer, so I 100% need digital aid in this pursuit. I spent the last several hours playing around with it, and I've (re) learned a very important lesson:

Art is hard. Holy shit drawing is hard.

I could paint a picture with words a million times more easily than whipping up this derivative garbage. That's me trying to replicate Emerald Flight's drawing in my avatar (the non-pencil one, that is) and it is not easy, even with the picture on screen right next to me. Coloring isn't any easier.

If anybody has any good Photoshop tutorials, YouTube channels, or general advice on how to git gud (other than "practice broham") I am all ears.

EDIT:
Also yes I'm still making slow progress on actual writing things.

Comments ( 4 )

Hey Rao! How you is?

I am a shite artist but I have two friends that are not shite artists, and from what they've told me, "practice, broham" is legitimately the best advice. Photoshop tutorials are great to learn the program, but they won't teach you how to draw. And I've had multiple failures at trying to find some "learn-to-draw-quick" resource online. They just don't exist :fluttershyouch:

They both got gud the same way, though: they looked at random objects in their house (and sometimes people on public transit) and they sketched them in a little book every day until they got seriously good at it. And then they started looking up resources on how to draw specific things like the human body. But I have tried those same tutorials and I am terrible at them. Because I haven't worked the muscle up to attempt them yet.

But that's just an uninformed opinion. Good luck with your artistic pursuits!

4821393
Just trying to copy your work is a huge pain in the ass. Getting the perspective and sizes of things right... bleh. I can't imagine pulling that out of my hat from scratch.

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